Security is a concern at many levels in computer systems. Typically when users log on to a computer system or log on to a secure application they must identify themselves and are challenged to authenticate themselves by entering a private password or by some other method of authentication. In addition to authenticating the user, computer systems or secure applications may check that a user is authorized to access the specific application which the user is attempting to access, a process called authorization.
The computer system or secure application may store user security information, user profiles, or user account information each of which contains the user's password (sometimes in encrypted form), the access privileges of the user, and other secure information. Creating the user security information or the user profile may be referred to as creating a user account or creating a user. Similarly, deleting or modifying the user security information or the user profile may be referred to as deleting or modifying the user account or deleting or modifying the user.
Creating users, deleting users, modifying users, generating reports on users, and other administrative processing of users in a computer security system or database may become tedious, time consuming, and error prone as the number of users administered within a centralized computer system increases.